Rethinking Israel

Israel Finkelstein is perhaps the best-known Israeli archaeologist in the world. Renowned for his innovative and ground-breaking research, he has written and edited more than 20 books and published more than 300 academic papers. He has served as the director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology and is the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of Archeology in the Bronze and Iron Age at Tel Aviv University. For the past two decades, he has been co-director of the Megiddo Expedition and is currently co-director of the Mission archéologique de Qiryat-Yéarim.

His work has greatly changed the face of archaeological and historical research of the biblical period. His unique ability to see the comprehensive big picture and formulate a broad framework has inspired countless scholars to reexamine long-established paradigms. His trail-blazing work covering every period from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age through the Hasmonean period, while sometimes controversial, has led to a creative new approach that connects archaeology with history, the social sciences, and the natural and life sciences. Israel Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a correspondant étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.

Professor Finkelstein is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 Dan David Prize for his radical revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2014, his book The Forgotten Kingdom was awarded the esteemed Prix Delalande-Guérineau by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris.

This volume, dedicated to Professor Finkelstein’s accomplishments and contributions, features 36 articles written by his colleagues, friends, and students in honor of his decades of scholarship and leadership in the field of biblical archaeology.

“Thanks to his numerous works as well as his talents as a communicator, Israel Finkelstein is undoubtedly one of the only archeologists of the ancient Levant whose name is known outside specialist circles.  In this volume, fifty colleagues (just over half of whom are Israeli) pay tribute, in thirty-six chapters, to his work and his research, which have made lasting progress in the fields of history and archeology in the biblical period.”—D. Luciani, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses

The Omride Annexation of the Beth-Shean Valley

Eran Arie

Follow the Negebite Ware Road

Shirly Ben-Dor Evian

A Cooking-Pot from Hazor with Neo-Hittite Seal Impressions

Amnon Ben-Tor, A. Cohen-Weinberger, and M. Weeden

"English Lady Owns Armageddon": Rosamond Templeton, Laurence Oliphant, and Tell El-Mutesellim

Eric H. Cline

Is Jacob Hiding in the House of Saul?

Margaret Cohen

With a Bible in One Hand...

Philip R Davies

Entering the Arena: The Megiddo Stables Reconsidered

Norma Franklin

The Iron I in the Samaria Highlands: A Nomad Settlement Wave or Urban Expansion?

Yuval Gadot

Jeroboam I? Jeroboam II? Or Jeroboam 0?: Jeroboam In History And Tradition

Lester L. Grabbe

Rethinking Destruction by Fire: Geoarchaeological Case Studies in Tel Megiddo and the Importance of Construction Methods

Ruth Shahack-Gross

Rethinking Amorites

Robert S. Homsher and Melissa S. Cradic

"...Out of the Land of Egypt, Out of the House of Slavery..." (Exodus 20:2): Forced Migration, Slavery and the Emergence of Israel

Ann E. Killebrew

Was There a Refugee Crisis in the 8th/7th Centuries BCE?

Ernst Axel Knauf

Israel Or Judah? The Shifting Body Politic and Collective Identity in Chronicles

Gary N. Knoppers

Early Philistia Revisited and Revised

Ido Koch

Palynological Analysis of the Glacis of the Seleucid Acra in Jerusalem: Construction Duration Estimation and Environmental Reconstruction

Dafna Langgut

The Future Of The Past: At-Risk World Heritage, Cyber-Archaeology, and Transdisciplinary Research

Thomas E. Levy

Bethel Revisited

Oded Lipschits

Rethinking the Philistines: A 2017 Perspective

Aren M. Maeir and Louise A. Hitchcock

The Fate of Megiddo at the End of the Late Bronze IIB

Mario A.S. Martin

Rediscovering a Lost North Israelite Conquest Story

Nadav Na’aman

Rethinking the Origins of Israel: 1 Chr 1–9 in the Light of Archaeology

Manfred Oeming

The Putative Authenticity of the New ‘Jerusalem’ Papyrus Inscription: Methodological Caution as a Desideratum

Christopher Rollston

The Rise and Fall of Josiah

Thomas Römer

Pax Assyriaca and the Animal Economy in the Southern Levant: Regional and Local-Scale Imperial Contacts

Lidar Sapir-Hen

"Israel" in the Joseph Story (Genesis 37–50)

Konrad Schmid

Psalm 29, The Voice of God, and Thunderstorms in the Eastern Mediterranean

William M. Schniedewind

Rethinking Israel and the Kingdom of Saul

Omer Sergi

Statistical Inference in Archaeology: Are We Confident?

Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Anat Mendel-Geberovich, David Levin, Eli Piasetzky, Eli Turkel

Looking Back on the Bible Unearthed

Neil Asher Silberman

Empires and Allies: A Longue Durée View from the Negev Desert Frontier

Yifat Thareani

New Evidence of Jerusalem’s Urban Development in the 9th Century BCE

Joe Uziel and Nahshon Szanton

The Final Phase of the Common "Proto-Semitic" Alphabet in the Southern Levant: A Rejoinder to Sass and Finkelstein

David S. Vanderhooft

Metal Production and Trade at the Turn of the First Millennium BCE: Some Answers, New Questions

Naama Yahalom Mack

Resilience and the Canaanite Palatial System: The Case of Megiddo

Assaf Yasur-Landau and Inbal Samet